This invention is concerned with cooling articles of newly-moulded glassware and particularly with a method of cooling a newly-moulded article of glassware and with a dead plate arrangement for a glassware manufacturing machine on which an article of glassware is cooled.
Known machines which manufacture articles of glassware have a mechanism which grips newly-moulded articles and lifts them away from the moulds in which they have been formed. This mechanism is called a take-out mechanism and moves the articles to a dead plate of the machine. The articles are then held in a position above the dead plate by the take-out mechanism and cooling air is blown on to the articles, normally through perforations in the dead plate, to cool the articles. The take-out mechanism then positions the articles on the dead plate and releases them so that they can be removed from the machine on to a conveyor belt by a wipe-out mechanism. The cooling of the articles takes place before the articles are positioned on the dead plate because, if they are positioned on the dead plate and immediately released by the take-out mechanism, cooling air blowing over the article may displace it on the dead plate, or in extreme cases blow it off the dead plate, so that the wipe-out mechanism will not be able to remove the article correctly. Furthermore, if the articles are placed on the dead plate before the cooling air is blown over them, the bottom of the article does not receive sufficient cooling as the air is unable to flow past the bottom. Thus, the take-out mechanism has to hold the articles during cooling before positioning them on the dead plate and is not available to return to collect further articles until after the cooling has taken place. Furthermore, known cooling arrangements involve the generation of a considerable amount of noise and heat in the atmosphere around the dead plate making the working environment unpleasant for the operator of the machine.
It is an object of the present invention to enable cooling of articles of glassware to take place on a dead plate without requiring the articles to be held in position by the take-out mechanism of the machine in which the articles have been moulded.